A review of food preservation based on zein: The perspective from application types of coating and film

Replacing animal proteins with plant proteins: Is this a way to improve quality and functional properties of hybrid cheeses and cheese analogs?

“…Zein exhibits a yellowish color and is characterized as a hydrophobic, odorless, tasteless, and biologically degradable storage prolamin in maize (Mallakpour et al., 2021; Ornelas, 2022). It contains a lot of hydrophobic amino acids such as glutamic acid and leucine, while lacking basic and acidic amino acids, especially tryptophan and lysine, which contribute to the hydrophobicity, emulsifying, and foaming properties, and excellent film‐forming ability of zein (Lan et al., 2023; Souza et al., 2022; Teklehaimanot & Emmambux, 2019). Conventionally, zein is widely used as a coating material in various foods, such as peeled garlic cloves, wheat bread, beef, mango, and mushroom, while its application in hybrid cheeses and cheese analogs, especially low‐fat cheese products, is extremely rare (Lan et al., 2023).…”

“…It contains a lot of hydrophobic amino acids such as glutamic acid and leucine, while lacking basic and acidic amino acids, especially tryptophan and lysine, which contribute to the hydrophobicity, emulsifying, and foaming properties, and excellent film‐forming ability of zein (Lan et al., 2023; Souza et al., 2022; Teklehaimanot & Emmambux, 2019). Conventionally, zein is widely used as a coating material in various foods, such as peeled garlic cloves, wheat bread, beef, mango, and mushroom, while its application in hybrid cheeses and cheese analogs, especially low‐fat cheese products, is extremely rare (Lan et al., 2023). In one of them, cheeses made from zein‐containing formulations showed a potential for structural weakening during heating, while their coefficient of friction decreased with increasing zein content, suggesting that zein‐formulated cheeses exhibited excellent lubricating and melting properties after cooking (Sutter et al., 2023).…”

“…Second, plant proteins are cheaper and possess unique properties (e.g., hydrophobicity, high emulsifying, high foaming, and environmentally friendly) in comparison to milk proteins, which give them a strong commercial potential to be used in the cheese industry (Lan et al., 2023; Mefleh et al., 2022, 2022; Yashini et al., 2021). The cost of producing plant protein hybrid cheeses and cheese analogs can be considerably less than that of natural cheeses, which is attributed to the following four aspects: (a) low cost of plant protein; (b) low cost of plant oils or fat; (c) low cost of manufacturing instruments compared to those required for making natural cheese; (d) lack of a period of aging (Chavan & Jana, 2007).…”

Zein-Based Nanoparticles as Active Platforms for Sustainable Applications: Recent Advances and Perspectives

“…However, although its hydrophobic properties make zein protein a good material for film formation [ 37 ], characterized by high transparency, an oxygen barrier, and humidity resistance, the use of zein as a polymetric matrix could suffer from fragility, easy breakage, and low flexibility, which limit its use [ 38 ]. Therefore, the addition of additives such as plasticizers [ 39 , 40 ], nanoparticles [ 41 , 42 ], polyphenols [ 43 , 44 ], and biopolymers is used to improve its properties [ 45 ].…”

Electrospinning Fabrication, Structural Analysis, Thermomechanical, Lyophobic, and Biocompatible Properties of Cottonseed Protein Isolate/Poly(ethylene oxide) Composite Fiber Mats

“…More importantly, proteins are composed of various amino acids, suggesting versatile chemical reactivity. Furthermore, they can be processed into biodegradable polymeric materials by the existing processing approaches for polymer materials. , In recent years, environmentally friendly protein-based materials have been widely reported, such as bioplastics, bioadhesives, biofibers, and packaging films …”